unitycatalog/unitycatalog

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

3501 stars · 663 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Unity Catalog is an open-source, multimodal data and AI catalog that provides a unified metadata and governance layer for tables, files, functions, and AI models across formats like Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Parquet, JSON, and CSV. It ships an OpenAPI-specified server and clients, is compatible with Hive metastore and Iceberg REST catalog APIs, and is a sandbox project under the LF AI & Data Foundation.

Use cases

• catalog tables, files, functions, and AI models in one place
• replace Hive metastore with an open, multimodal catalog
• serve Iceberg REST catalog APIs to multiple compute engines
• govern and secure data and AI assets with unified access control
• vend secure credentials for lakehouse clients like Spark, DuckDB, and Trino
• self-host an open data catalog for Delta Lake and Iceberg
• manage metadata for Gen AI tools and unstructured data

When to choose

• you need an open, engine-agnostic catalog spanning Delta Lake, Iceberg, Hudi, Parquet, JSON, and CSV
• you want unified governance for both tabular data and AI assets like models and Gen AI tools
• you need Hive metastore or Iceberg REST catalog API compatibility with an OSS server
• you want vendor-neutral metadata management backed by a broad industry ecosystem

When to avoid

• you need a fully mature, feature-complete governance suite today - parts of governance and access control are still on the roadmap
• you only use a single engine with its own built-in catalog and don't need cross-engine interoperability
• you require a lightweight embedded catalog rather than a running server service

Facets

service · maturity active

database search-engine auth authorization api-framework http-server cli sdk databases large-language-models analytics big-data apis self-hosted security jvm self-hosted windows cli data-catalog metadata-catalog lakehouse delta-lake apache-iceberg hive-metastore iceberg-rest-catalog governance credential-vending openapi ai-assets data-ai-governance data-engineering docker linux macos

Member repositories

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="unitycatalog/unitycatalog")